Panasonic's "Life is Electric" Campaign Wins Japan's First Cannes Design Grand Prix

Cannes, France - Panasonic's "Life is electric" campaign, which asks, "Is it possible to 'see' electricity?", launched by the Marketing Division in Japan has won a Grand Prix at one of the world's largest advertising competitions, "Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity," (Cannes Lions). This is the first Grand Prix for Japan in the Design category.

Recognized as the world's biggest and the most prestigious advertising competitions for the sheer number of entries it receives, the panel of renowned judges, and the level of work submitted, the Cannes Lions is the most sought after award among the creative industry. The festival is held every year for a week in June, at the "Palais des Festivals et des Congrès", which is also the main venue for the Cannes Film Festival. This year, Cannes Lions began on June 18 and received more than 43,000 entries for 24 categories from which a Grand Prix, Gold, Silver, and Bronze winners were selected for each category. During the week it welcomed over 15,000 guests from 100 countries across the world.

The "Life is electric" video and the "Is it possible to 'see' electricity?*" project that won the Design Grand Prix was launched by Panasonic's Marketing Division in Japan. Being the first Design Grand Prix for Japan, the win brought joy not only to Panasonic, but to the entire Japanese advertising industry as well. *By visibly illustrating electricity, this project sought to give each battery its very own story, and to promote understanding for how precious electricity is. The campaign includes events, print materials, and videos on the web.

For the Design category "entries will need to demonstrate how design has been used to define a brand or communicate its key message" so in addition to videos, the campaign must be comprehensive, encompassing websites, poster designs, and communication at events. The campaign was very well received by the jury. "We all started to think, 'How much electricity do I make when I do this?' We all fell in love with it. We chose it with our hearts and minds."

For Panasonic, this is the second Grand Prix. Panasonic won the first Grand Prix for the film category back in 1982, 34 years ago, for its work, "Matsushita A Menu of Lights".

The video, "Life is electric", captures an experiment where Panasonic took energy generated in daily life, such as power created by exuberant children playing in the park and "Cuddly Hamster Power" and used it to power 21 nickel hydride batteries. We do not really think about electricity day to day, but these stories express electricity in a visible way.

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